March 1810:32 p.m.

Lucia the French girl saw Beth's fingers tremble as they
closed to grip the demitasse. This was the last of their
meetings before performance.

Lucia the French girl heard the shaken faith, the
queasiness of Beth's voice as Beth uttered thickly: "You will
fail."

But Lucia the French girl did not think so.

I woke too early this morning for a hot shower in my
hotel room. The water flowed only cold. I skipped the shower.
I crossed the border. I made my way by trolley and bus to my
favorite San Diego beach. I tramped into the ocean then. The
sea water was colder than the shower would have been. But I
soaked myself blithely. I paddled about. I laughed. And
then, slogging up out of the surf, I felt my wet hair hanging
long and loose. It felt good hanging like that--free,
unbound. And I smiled. I stretched out on a towel to warm and
dry myself. The drying, the warming took many minutes. It
was still just 9 a.m. As soon as I no longer dripped, I rose
for a stroll to my favorite San Diego cafe. Spontaneously I
stopped at a pay telephone. I phoned my sister. I chatted
with my sister by pay telephone and I laughed.

I sit in a Sanborns now scribbling these notes. It is
late now this Friday night and again the Tijuana sidewalks
dissipate. This Sanborns stands at the dead center of
Avenida Revolución. The sidewalks beyond its windows teem
with young Americans. Here, at this counter, just off those
sidewalks, I'm the only American. Mexicans comprise this
Sanborns clientele--middle-aged, young adult. I've got one
foot in Mexico, right now, and the other in the United
States. I chuckle. For a couple of days it will be like
this. Two or three, maybe. I just ordered molletes.

It went something like this:

"Welcome to the United States of America. Anyone
attempting to enter with fraudulent documents will be detained
for a hearing before an immigration judge. A second offense
can lead to felony charges."

The recording plays and replays itself as you march a
tiled, shadowy concourse toward sluiceways of chrome, some
turnstiles, and a phalanx of green-clad unsmiling border
patrol agents. The voice in the recording is deep and firm
and ominous. The voice gives you doubts about your very
valid documentation. Before you can reach for it, though,
before you can assure yourself of your own validity, you're
pouring down a sluiceway, through a turnstile, and the agent
doesn't seem to care about the passport you've fumbled from
your bag. "Citizenship," he says to me. "U.S.," I respond.
And he waves me through.

Countless times I've crossed the border. Today it was
different. Today, I laughed. For giddy, I felt. Giddy
tripping past that border patrol agent. Giddy tripping across
that tile floor to that automatic sliding door. I exited then
to the concrete deck from which I could see the bright red
San Diego trolley. There I laughed again. For there hummed
the trolley, just as I knew it would hum. And there stood
passengers waiting to board the trolley, just as I knew they
would stand. Funny to emerge after so long a trip to find
everything just as it was before. I am altered, recast.
I've been transformed by this journey. But I arrive and I
encounter everything just as it was. Identical. The
sidewalks, the storefronts, the trees, the people. There is
something comical in this. The environment seems somehow
absurd in its sameness. How can it all still be exactly as
it was? Exactly! When I am not? You know the answer, of
course. And you try to step out from behind your
egocentrism. But still it tickles. So you laugh. You laugh
at the environment good-naturedly. You laugh at it. And you
smile.

The trolley and bus ride to the beach was a motor tour
of my six-month stay in San Diego. There slumbered the down-
and-out neighborhoods in which I dwelt. Here shined the
bright trolley stop from which I daily embarked for downtown.
There rose the old skyscraper in which I solicited non-profit
donations. Here towered the new skyscraper in which I
peddled cell phone packages. Then I was boarding the bus to
Pacific Beach. So many Sundays I rode that bus. And finally
I was wandering Mission Boulevard. To the cafe first? I
wondered. Or the beach? Or the cafe on the beach?

I sat in the cafe off the beach after chatting with my
sister by pay telephone, after my swim. Sitting in that fond
familiar cafe I felt like some great benignant king. A
glorious power, I felt. A lordly power. Arthurian. My
muscles were taut and ready. Bodily muscles. Psychic
muscles. My arms. My hands. My will. Invincible, I felt.
And a vast contentment in being. Flushed with life, with its
energy. Scintillating. It's the secret, you know. I know
the secret. The mystery. I can see now the mystery. The
enigma. I understand this enigma. All around me. Awash in
it, I sat, I sit. And I laughed, I chuckle. This is life.
This is its dynamism and its agitation and its power and its
laughter--Around me, about me. And so simple. So simple
that it is invisible. I chuckle again. For to express it.
Just to express it. That is the key. To express this life
truthfully, as I see it truthfully, in my own way truthfully.
And how I smiled sitting there. And how I chuckle sitting
here now in Sanborns.

In my giddy bliss, over the course of today, I felt
tempted to rent an apartment in San Diego. But I need the
denouement of Albuquerque, I think. To revert to my workaday
routine will be a readjustment--To revert to some
telemarketing job, to some daily trek by bicycle to some
telemarketing job, to my Spartan existence in my twenty foot
Winnebago, to my daily unglamorous wrestlings with my
unfinished novel, to this looming attempt at applying the
secret. A denouement. A new city is a good place for a
denouement. Maybe afterward I will come back here. Maybe in
January.

Yes,

Lucia the French girl heard the shaken faith, the
queasiness of Beth's voice as Beth uttered thickly: "You will
fail."

But Lucia the French girl did not think so.

Late this afternoon I crossed again from Tijuana to "el
otro lado" to collect some extra notes for that short fiction
I've been pondering. Dusk on Coronado Island, I studied,
looking toward downtown. Night on Imperial Beach pier, I
studied, looking out to sea. Working these notes, that
dislocation of today's return, that dislocation and giddiness
that rifled my consciousness all day long began to wane. My
laughter began to ebb. Working these notes, revisiting these
places, I began to ease back into my American state of mind.
Suddenly, I was just waiting on busses and trolleys.
Suddenly, I was just wishing for a child's cries to still
that I might better concentrate. Suddenly, I was just
chuckling.

This journey is over. It's final event was the crossing
of the border and that accompanying flood of impression. And
San Diego warmed me today out of that ice cold detachment I
found in travel. I didn't even realize the detachment was so
thoroughgoing until it began to thaw. But it was. Keenly
insulated, I was, brutally apart. I am very much relieved
now. All that's left is a couple of long bus trips. One
overnight from San Diego to Tucson. Another the next night
from Tucson to El Paso. All familiar terrain. In El Paso
I'll collect the last of my descriptions. In El Paso, too,
I'll scribble the end of this. The gist of the end I worked
out in Los Mochis. For, there, looking down over the edge of
the abyss, I understood the neverendingness of it all. Now,
though, to finish these molletes, and then, The Don Quixote
Piece. Its last scene hangs before me as vivid as a naked
woman.